


marigolds

by psychedelia



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-13 03:02:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18023528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychedelia/pseuds/psychedelia
Summary: larry gardens. cliff helps.





	marigolds

His marigolds had finally popped open, their lion-mane petals waving orange defiances as they roared at the sun above them. It made Larry smile, his hand cupping one of the blossoms as he crouched in the dirt, the tails of his coat flat against the earth like the train of a fancy dress. He wished he could feel the soft satiny velvet of the flower against his bare fingers, but just looking at their colors were enough to make him smile. 

He let the flower head bounce back into its original position, and could only hope that his peonies would have an equally daring overnight blossoming. The pads of the bandages on his fingers were stained a light orange from the marigold pollen, and he tried in vain to wipe it off on his pants, to no avail.

There was a glass of lemonade sitting on a small garden glass table, perspiring in the early afternoon sun. It was untouched; he’d poured the glass after spying the pitcher in the fridge (with one of Rita’s neatly cursive  _ Please drink up! _ Notes taped to the vessel), and hadn’t realized until he had crouched in the dirt with a shovel in hand, mouth dry from the sun, that he wouldn’t be able to drink it without making a fool of himself. 

“Drink that.” He said, gesturing to the table. “It’s getting watered down.” Larry didn’t need to turn to hear Cliff’s approaching form. It must have surprised him, though, because the sound of his clanking footsteps stopped for a moment before continuing. 

“I can’t, idiot.” 

_ That _ made Larry turn, looking at Cliff over his shoulder. “Right. Guess our biggest curse is watching Rita’s lemonade go bad.” He sighed, a dramatic puffing of his chest to illustrate his point. 

It made Cliff snort, his shoulders hiking up in the beginning of a full-bodied laugh. Larry appreciated that about Cliff; even robotic and stiff and designed (sometimes, Larry wondered if it was on purpose) to look apathetic, Cliff managed to express himself better than anyone else in the house. There was a willingness to admit to and enact out emotions that the other residents of the house had pushed deep, deep, down. 

Larry almost envied the openness to which Cliff carried himself. 

“What brings you out here, if not for Rita’s excellent homemade lemonade?” He looked away from Cliff, back to the blooms, knowing that he shouldn’t stare for too long. Eye contact wasn’t something Larry had ever been good at, but since-- since. Since the bandages and glasses, it’d been easier to feel… Well, less conspicuous, so to speak. Easier to stare a person down until they got uncomfortable without fear that they were seeing Larry for who he was. 

There was a familiar nervousness in his belly, looking at Cliff for too long. So he didn’t look at Cliff for long.

“Bored. Stretching my legs. Get too stiff in that house; reminds me too much of sitting behind the wheel for hours and hours ‘till your thighs go numb.”

“...You could help me weed.” 

Cliff was quiet, and Larry heard him shuffle his feet. He glanced back at him again, and though he knew Cliff wouldn’t see it, his brow was raised in a question. 

“...Not sure you’d want my feet stomping around your flower beds, bud.”

Larry offered Cliff a pair of weed cutters. His hands at this point were more dusty brown than sterile white. “You’re more graceful than you think.”

Cliff slowly took the tool from Larry, but didn’t move closer to the garden. 

“You know how to use those, right?” He asked, his tone purposefully barbed. He’d noticed, over the years, that he sometimes had to emphasize his tone, considering no one could read his facial expressions. 

“God, you’re a dick.” Cliff replied, his shoulders hunching upwards again for a moment. He seemed to do that whenever there was something making him nervous. 

“Well, I don’t have all day, and you’re blocking the sunlight from my peonies. They need that sun.” 

“Christ.” Cliff stepped closer and slowly, slowly lowered himself down into the dirt. Larry had mostly been lying to his face about the whole graceful thing; Cliff walked and moved and motioned like he was made of metal, and well, he was, so at least he had a valid excuse. His knees dropped into the dirt hard enough that the peonies near him shook their blossomed heads at him like annoyed lions. 

“You just pluck the plants that--” 

“I know how to garden, Larry.” Cliff grabbed a small prickly plant and pulled it up from the roots to illustrate his point, tossing it behind him onto the gravel road.

Larry stared at him. “I thought you were rich. Woulda had your own gardeners.”

“I wasn’t  _ that _ out of touch.” Cliff paused, while Larry just continued to stare at him. “Okay, so I was  _ out of touch _ , but-- hey, you know what? I’m helping you out, why do I have to explain myself?” Larry shifted his gaze to a weed Cliff was angrily plucking, knowing that it probably just looked as though he was still looking at Cliff. 

“You don’t. I just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t ruin my plants.” He haphazardly threw an arm behind him, gesturing to a pile of empty pots that he’d cleaned and stacked next to the rain gutter. “After Jane gutted my bus, I had a few casualties.” 

“So you employ the robot man with zero physical awareness.” Larry could all but see Cliff rolling his eyes.Frustrating as it was, he liked that they both had to try equally hard to read one another’s faces. It evened the playing field, a bit. He’d be a liar if conversations with Rita and Jane and the Chief didn’t take on a note of envy when they could clearly convey a look of disgust, or wry humor, with just a flick of an eyebrow or an irony soaking through their cheekbones. 

Larry plucked one of the marigolds, leaving a few inches of stem below the head. “Jane would get distracted, and Rita would ask why we don’t employ gardeners.” He reached forward and shoved the flower into one of the metallic openings in Cliff’s shoulder blades; he felt his lips stretching wider at how the bronze of Cliff’s… flesh wasn’t the right word, but Larry couldn’t be bothered to think of another, matched the orange of the flower. He wasn’t wearing the leather jacket he often opted to wore, instead donning just a muscle tank that was curiously blank; maybe he hadn’t had a chance to spray-paint one of his baffling phrases on it yet. “Vic would keep asking why this is important to do, and I’m not about to argue with a kid about the importance of gardening. So. You.”

“That’s a lot of rationalization for someone who didn’t know I was gonna be outside today.” 

“Ah. Well. That too.” Some of his lavender had sprouted up in the beds next to the marigolds and he stretched himself wide to read one of the plants, carefully breaking a couple of the stalks. He sat back up and, when Cliff was back to plucking weeds, reached over and shoved them in the shoulder joints again, careful not to actually touch him. 

He knew that Cliff couldn’t feel any of his touches, but it didn’t make it any less natural to be completely aware of just exactly how close Larry was to him. 

It was harder to feel the sun through his bandages, but the early afternoon heat was hot enough to give him  _ something _ , at least, and he let his face fall upwards like a sunning cat. He didn’t often have someone to help him with the gardening, and it was easy to let himself fall into a quiet comfort wherein the only sounds were the occasional buzzing from fat honey bees (there were plenty on the estate, since Larry had realized  he was just about the perfect to beekeep about a decade ago) wriggling into the bright flower heads, and the grunting and metallic movements of Cliff as he moved through the rows of flowers. 

“I don’t see you actually  _ doing _ anything, Trainor.” Cliff said after a while. He was looking over his shoulder at Larry, the other shoulder still carrying little flower parcels waving at the wind from their perch in his joints. It made Larry snort.

“I did all the marigolds. I’m letting you do the peonies.” He replied, and Cliff just sighed and threw a clump of dirt-clogged weeds at him. Larry flinched and cowered, scowling when his arms came away covered in dirt. “Rude. You’re a rude man, Cliff. The rudest I ever met, probably.” 

“Is this what you do all day? Garden and berate everyone? Christ. You’re like a geriatric grandma.” 

Larry didn’t deign to respond to him, just brushed the dirt and weeds off his body. Cliff continued to weed for a few more minutes and then sat up, looking back at him. “Think that’s everything. One of your peonies even popped open. First one.” 

That made Larry finally get up from his perch in the soil, coming to stand over Cliff and look down at the plant. It was a smaller plant, less leaves and a little on the frail side. Evidently she’d put all her energy into making two flowers, a gamble that COULD pay off if the flower attract good insects, and fast. He reached down and plucked one of the flowers, and, with Cliff watching, shoved that one along with the other flowers, eyeing him as Cliff realized the small impromptu bouquet jutting out like replescent wires. 

“You could use some ornamentation,” Larry said by way of explanation.

“Uh-huh.” Cliff replied, but he didn’t sound mad, or annoyed. Just… slightly amused in a quiet way. A confusing response. Cliff wasn’t one to shy away from yelling or at the very least being upfront about how he felt about something.

“I can help you take them out.” Larry realized that maybe it was too much, too intimate, too weird and strange and awful and something he shouldn’t just  _ do _ to men, who might take it the wrong way and then he’d be in loads of trouble and he’d-- 

“Nah.” Cliff waved a hand through the air, nearly side sweeping an angry fat bumblebee. “I kinda wanna see how long they’ll stay in there. Not like I can feel them.” He was looking at them as much as he could, neck tilted. 

“...Okay.” Larry felt his shoulders hunch up, apprehension in his gut.

“They’re-- You know, I liked flowers, a lot. My daughter used to bring me a bouquet everytime I finished a race. Obviously her mom bought them, but it was always  _ Clara _ who’d give them to me. Always put ‘em proud on the kitchen table. So she’d see them whenever she was running around. So  _ I _ would see them when I was running around.” 

Cliff slowly stood, and he looked as though he wanted to brace himself by holding onto Larry’s shoulder, his hand half-bridging the gap between them, but he aborted the movement and grunted his way to a standing position instead. 

Larry straightened himself, trying to look taller. “If you like flowers so much, you can help me in the mornings.” 

“Hm.” Cliff looked around at the beds again, and then back at Larry. “Only if I get the best trimmings from the work.” He snorted, and Larry felt the apprehension turn to something else, something lighter, something softer, and before he knew what he was doing, he was nodding. Nodding and stepping out of the flower beds to grab the discarded weeds lying in the gravel road.

“Deal. I’ve got carnations that are due to bloom tomorrow anyways.”

Cliff patted right under his shoulder and nodded, the lavender and carnation and peony bouncing with the movement, and Larry couldn’t tell one-hundred percent, but he was almost certain Cliff would be smiling if he could.   
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> yehaw im on tumblr at [ seancee](https://seancee.tumblr.com) . howdy.


End file.
